Friday, August 5, 2011

Have I mentioned that we go to the Library on Thursdays to pick up thematic books for the following week? Well, we do. We have a great, small-town library, and always find cute books and enjoy reading them all week long.

This week, for the letter E, I focused on fiction and non-fiction books about Elephants. The fiction books were cute, but by far our favorite was I Dream of an Elephant by Ami Rubinger. The subdued pastels are so beautiful, it made me want to frame these images and design a nursery around them! Kenna and I read this book about ten thousand times this week. Each page has a rhyme for a color, so it was the perfectchance for me to introduce kenna to rhyming. bShs still a little young, but this book was a nice and simple anf the rhymws were based on color words, with visual clues. awesome!

The non-fiction books we checked out were mostly used to look at pictures, since a lot of the info was way over kenna's head. It didn't stop my husband and I from learning a ton, though. Here's a few facts you should definately add to your list of "useless facts about elephants".

1. elephants walk on their tippy-toes.

2. Elephant skulls, with a large central "nose" hole, probably started the myths about Cyclops.

3. Elephants can only digest half of what they eat, so they eat ginormous quantities of food each year.

4.And the saddest fact I learned- elephants have no known predators except humans, and yet all species of elephants are endangered.

Kenna and I focused on elephant body parts- trunk, tusk, and ears, and them we talked about how their skin feels (texture), and what they might use their trunk for. She especially liked the images of elephants squirting themselves with water, and of the babies holding their mommy's tail with their trunks.